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Raised Garden Beds

This was a long 3-week project but could have been completed in less time if it hadn’t rained every 2-3 days to slow the progress down. I am so glad these are finally finished! I had bruises all over my body once this project was complete. {more on the purple painted stuff later in the post}

Last year in April, I posted about the patio garden I planted. I had noted how much success I had with a patio garden in 2010, and after trying to plant in the ground without any success in 2012, I went back to the patio garden last year. It was terrible. Even though I used Bonnie’s herb & vegetable fertilizer, I suppose the soil was just too depleted in previous years’ containers. I also planted in mid to late April last year, and we had a rather cold spell in early May. I had to buy new cucumber plants because of it. My mom later gave me some banana pepper and bell pepper plants they had left over, so I planted those. The pepper plants I’d planted in April never really did much, but the ones she gave me put out a decent amount. So the cold spell we had could have stunted growth. I also made the mistake of using moisture control potting soil in the new pots for the patio garden. Don’t ever use moisture control. I’ve never had any luck growing stuff with that crap, and I didn’t realize I’d gotten it until I was ready to use the soil. I wasn’t going back to return it, but I should have.

This year, I wanted a container garden without the hassle of watering it every day in multiple containers. There’s an area in our back yard in which I’m not sure what the original purpose was. I blogged about this area last May, and here are a few pictures of it from previous years.

June 2010

March 2013

May 2013

June 2013

November 2013

November 2013

It appears to be mostly blackberries, sweet shrubs, and weeds. In June of last year, I made the mistake of putting a net over the area in an attempt to save the blackberries from the birds. The blackberries never got that big, and the weeds grew through the netting throughout the summer. It was a freaking disaster! It was impossible to pull the net up, so I had to go around the area and cut everything down and roll all the plant materials and netting into a ball to get rid of it. Never again. By the end of last year, Alex and I had decided to make the area a raised garden bed for 2014. There are large rocks and a lot of chert in that area, so digging was out of the question.

So, on May 14, 2014, my cousin and I started building 2 garden beds measuring 5′ x 10′ x 2.5′. And let me just say, I was almost 35 years old and had never used a drill or saw. Okay, maybe I’ve used a drill from something small indoors, but I don’t remember specifics. But yes, I know. I never really had a reason to use a saw or drill for actual projects. But now that I have learned how to use them, I think I’m hooked on DIY projects. So after some instruction from my cousin, I pieced together one of the corners. Ignore the blurriness since he doesn’t know how to take a clear picture on the iPhone. lol

We built as much as we could inside the basement on the first day because it rained the entire day.

Below is one 5′ x 10′ x 2.5′ bed without any decorative touches. A LOT of people told me it was way too deep, but I liked the idea of not having to bend over or squat down to pick the vegetables. The height of the beds also made it easy for planting. We could have stopped here and just used it like this, but I’d seen a few pins on Pinterest and had a couple ideas for decorative pieces.

My original idea was to use 4″ x 4″ posts cut to size for connecting the corners (inside the bed, using wood screws), and then putting a 2″ x 10″ x 5′ board in the inside middle to keep it from bowing out. But at this point, I was still intimidated by using a handsaw. Alex also doesn’t have a strong enough saw to really go through a 4″ x 4″ post. So we used large L brackets to hold the corners together with each board (4 per corner, 16 per garden bed), and we used long, flat metal connectors in the middle of each long side to hold it sturdy. By NOOOO means is this perfect, but it will do!

And let me just say that this has been a HUGE learning experience for me. First of all, do NOT build something this big anywhere but in the area you plan to put it. We would have lost a day of building if we had to wait for the rain to stop, so we assembled pieces in the basement and brought them outside the basement door to attach to the main frame. That was a mistake. In the end, it took 4 of us and a small hand-truck to move this down to where we were putting them! We built the 2nd one exactly where we wanted it!

Also, from now on, if you do not have self-drilling screws, PRE-DRILL! We finally got some 1 1/4″ wood screws that were self-drilling with a star tip. AMAZING! I won’t use any other type of wood screw if I don’t have to for future projects! However, I would probably go ahead and pre-drill the holes because these self-drilling ones did split the wood on occasion.

This part of the garden bed used 18 pressure-treated boards measuring 2″ x 10″ x 10′. We got the lumber at Lowe’s, and we had them cut 6 of the boards in half for the shorter ends. This is before I learned how to use the saw.

With each garden bed, we went over the entire outside with a clear, waterproofing sealant by Olympic. We also covered the bottom inside board with the sealant since some of that board might be in the ground. As for the top 2 inside boards, we decided to line that area with plastic to prevent wet dirt from always being up against the boards. The sealant was NOT clear, but fortunately, I liked the effect it had on the wood.

Alex even helped with the clear coating on quite a bit.

And then I had to stain all of the decorative pieces for the corners and sides.

We used four 1″ x 4″ x 10″ boards for the 1st garden bed to get 16 boards 30″ long. Each bed needed 14 pieces. We had Lowe’s do the cuts for these boards as well because it was just faster. I think. We used 1″ x 4″ x 10′ boards cut into 30″ pieces because we assumed that the 3 boards high (10″ each) was 30″. Wrong. It actually wound up being around 28″ high. So, with the 2nd garden bed, we had three 1″ x 4″ x 10′ boards cut into 28″ pieces, giving us 12 boards (plus the 2 leftover equaling 14 pieces).

Next was the fun part – trying to get the beds to sit level. So we worked in the rain to get trenches dug because on the day that we needed to do this, it rained the entire freaking day. It rained a lot during these three weeks. I must have pissed someone off in a previous life. Fortunately, my cousin did most of the digging. Haha! The whole process you do in order to level something like this was completely new to me, and it took a few explainings for me to kind of understand it. LOL A few of the roots were a pain in the ass, but thankfully it wasn’t anything he wasn’t able to get rid of.

The next day while he was at work, I came in and cleaned up the areas inside the beds. One of the weeds was covered with red aphids. I just hope they don’t flock to my vegetables.

We put down a black weed carpet because I am paranoid about the blackberry roots popping up through the garden – even if they will be 2 – 2½ feet underground once the beds are filled with dirt. And then we lined the inside with plastic to help slow the destruction of the wood over time. I tried cutting the plastic so it wouldn’t cover the bottom board, but I wound up cutting too much my first cut, so I left it. Alex is a little concerned this might effect drainage. I hope not…

And then we topped the beds with boards stained the same color as the corner and side decorative pieces. For the top for each bed, we used two boards measuring 5/4″ x 6″ x 12′ for the long sides and 1 board measuring 5/4″ x 6″ x 10′ (cut in half) for the shorter sides. We did have to cut off some on the longer boards; it was over 10 feet long with the decorative top, so that’s why we weren’t able to go with 10′ boards for the longer sides.

And here they are, ready to be filled (before we re-did the herb garden in the corner) on May 21st. They are FAR from perfect, and I feel we rushed way too much and cut a lot of corners, but I was desperately trying to get them built, filled with dirt, and planted before it was too late.

My cousin wanted to build the entire raised herb garden. He used a 4″ x 4″ post as the center of the tiered herb garden himself (it took a lot of finessing for the hand-held saw to cut through it since we didn’t need the entire length of the post). And why in God’s name I originally picked purple for the boards in the herb garden is beyond me. I didn’t really think about the colors it would be going with. I didn’t like the overall look of how it was pieced together either, so I did re-do that part after filling the beds with dirt.

I posted an ad on Craigslist trying to find someone that wanted to get rid of some dirt, but no one ever answered it. Thankfully, we discovered a landscaping nursery not even 2 miles from our house, so we had dirt delivered. Eleven cubic yards of soil to be exact. $507.50 worth of dirt (after taxes and two $20 delivery charges). $507 for dirt… I still can’t get over that, but we had to get the beds filled.

The first 7-yard load of top soil was delivered on my birthday (May 22nd). I shoveled a lot of the dirt myself for quite a few hours, going back and forth, one wheelbarrow at a time the first day. Happy birthday to me! LOL I bought the wheelbarrow the day before, so I now own one! We’ve been at this house for almost 5 years and never really had a need for one. Alex and my cousin later joined me, and wow, does it go a lot faster with three people! It would have been super awesome if we’d been able to get the guy to just dump the dirt directly into the beds.

The following day, Alex and I continued to fill the beds with top soil. The plan was to take the top soil up to the top of the 2nd board, and then use a garden soil mix for the last board’s depth (10 inches). So, after 2 days of shoveling top soil, the nursery delivered the garden soil mix which has sand, soil conditioner, and horse manure in it. I was on my own Saturday, shoveling away. I only got one bed completely filled (10″ deep). It took me forever because my body was just exhausted from the previous 2 days of constant shoveling, and it was hot as hell outside. So there were quite a few breaks. I was literally stumbling over my feet at times because I was just tired. I had Alex’s help & 2 of my cousins’ help the final day of dirt shoveling to fill up the remaining 1/3 of the last bed. Four days of shoveling dirt – the absolutely hardest, most labor intensive part. I’m so glad that’s done! This is where having more shallow beds would have came in handy.

I don’t have any assembly pictures, but once that was finished, I did the herb garden area again. We left the bottom purple boards since they would be under the dirt and were attached to the garden bed with L brackets for support. This color I believe was called Spanish Olive, but it looks more brown than olive. I’m a little disappointed in the color, but oh well. I’m proud of myself for the assembly of this herb garden because I did all of it on my own, and that’s when I realized just how easy it was to use a handsaw! {I got practice when cutting the ends off of the top board pieces.} The handsaw did have a little difficulty cutting through these 5/4″ thick boards, but it did the job. Had I used the same boards for underneath the soil as I did for the ones on top that are visible for the tiered herb garden, I would have used 2 boards 5/4″ x 6″ x 12′ long, cut the following way: 2 boards @ 30″ long (underneath the soil, attached to the garden beds inside), 2 boards @ 20″ long, 2 boards at 18″ long, 2 boards @ 10″ long, and 2 boards at 8″ long. The shorter boards go inside the square box when assembling each layer of the herb garden, so it’s a perfect 20″ x 20″ square and a 10″ x 10″ square. I connected the 2 tiers together with flat connectors, and once I’d painted it and let it dry (I did not paint the inside), I connected the herb garden to the post using L brackets.

I was finally able to venture to Lowe’s and a garden shop to get vegetable plants and flowers, and all but my Italian green bean seeds, cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe were planted on May 28th. I got the green bean seeds planted May 29th. I had to re-do one of the long, top boards because we used it as a lip to dump the dirt from the wheelbarrow, and it screwed it up {another lesson learned}. On May 30th, I assembled the trellises myself, using rebar posts and wire fencing (with 2″ x 3″ mesh holes) and planted the cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. I’m pretty sure the cucumber trellis will be sturdy enough, but I’ll have to see how the cantaloupe & watermelon one holds up. I might need to reinforce the arch with PVC if it gets too weighed down.

I also got all the flowers planted that day as well, so everything is officially planted! Quite a few think I’m getting the garden planted really late, but my parents told me they used to plant theirs at the end of May (including stuff from seeds) because they got tired of the cold spells killing stuff earlier in the planting season. I can relate after last year, so I’m not worried about how late it got planted. I’ll talk in more detail in a follow-up post about the plants and flowers I’m growing.

I only have a few touch-up things to do now. I need to fill in the holes where the wood screws attached the decorative pieces and corners, sand over the filler, and re-stain them.

And I had originally wanted to put a cute owl fence post topper where the herb harden is, but I can’t find one in stores or online that I like. So I’m going to do a DIY fence post topper and paint a birdhouse to top the post. More to come on that as well, since I’ve already finished painting it by the time I’ve gotten around to posting this.

To see more about the garden in 2014, you can click on the tag Garden 2014.